Many people working in large companies speak business-buzzwords as a second language. Business language is full of pretty meaningless words. I Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore article tells that the language of internet business models has made the problem even worse. There are several strains of this epidemic: We have forgotten how to use the real names of real things, acronymitis, and Meaningless Expressions (like “Our goal is to exceed the customer’s expectation”). This would all be funny if it weren’t true. Observe it, deconstruct it, and appreciate just how ridiculous most business conversation has become.
Check out this brilliant Web Economy Bullshit Generator page. It generates random bullshit text based on the often used words in business language. And most of the material it generates look something you would expect from IT executives and their speechwriters (those are randomly generated with Web Economy Bullshit Generator):
“scale viral web services”
“integrate holistic mindshare”
“transform back-end solutions”
“incentivize revolutionary portals”
“synergize out-of-the-box platforms”
“enhance world-class schemas”
“aggregate revolutionary paradigms”
“enable cross-media relationships”
How to talk like a CIO article tries to tell how do CIOs talk, and what do they talk about, and why they do it like they do it. It sometimes makes sense to analyze the speaking and comportment styles of the people who’ve already climbed the corporate ladder if you want to do the same.
The Most Annoying, Pretentious And Useless Business Jargon article tells that the stupid business talk is longer solely the province of consultants, investors and business-school types, this annoying gobbledygook has mesmerized the rank and file around the globe. The next time you feel the need to reach out, touch base, shift a paradigm, leverage a best practice or join a tiger team, by all means do it. Just don’t say you’re doing it. If you have to ask why, chances are you’ve fallen under the poisonous spell of business jargon. Jargon masks real meaning. The Most Annoying, Pretentious And Useless Business Jargon article has a cache of expressions to assiduously avoid (if you look out you will see those used way too many times in business documents and press releases).
Is Innovation the Most Abused Word In Business? article tells that most of what is called innovation today is mere distraction, according to a paper by economist Robert Gordon. Innovation is the most abused word in tech. The iPad is about as innovative as the toaster. You can still read books without an iPad, and you can still toast bread without a toaster. True innovation radically alters the way we interact with the world. But in tech, every little thing is called “innovative.” If you were to believe business grads then “innovation” includes their “ideas” along the lines of “a website like *only better*” or “that thing which everyone is already doing but which I think is my neat new idea” Whether or not the word “innovation” has become the most abused word in the business context, that remains to be seen. “Innovation” itself has already been abused by the patent trolls.
Using stories to catch ‘smart-talk’ article tells that smart-talk is information without understanding, theory without practice – ‘all mouth and no trousers’, as the old aphorism puts it. It’s all too common amongst would-be ‘experts’ – and likewise amongst ‘rising stars’ in management and elsewhere. He looks the part; he knows all the right buzzwords; he can quote chapter-and-verse from all the best-known pundits and practitioners. But is it all just empty ‘smart-talk’? Even if unintentional on their part, people who indulge in smart-talk can be genuinely dangerous. They’ll seem plausible enough at first, but in reality they’ll often know just enough to get everyone into real trouble, but not enough to get out of it again. Smart-talk is the bane of most business – and probably of most communities too. So what can we do to catch it?
2,765 Comments
Nigel says:
Omg I delight in that you taking on the topic of Business talk
Tomi Engdahl says:
3. You got through that entire conference call without once saying the word “synergy”. Have a cup of coffee.
Source:
14 Ways To Reward Your Motivation
http://www.buzzfeed.com/miller64/14-ways-to-reward-your-motivation
Tomi Engdahl says:
The next corporate revolution will be power to the peons
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9239783/The_next_corporate_revolution_will_be_power_to_the_peons
‘Bureaucracy has to die,’ says business consultant at CITE Conference (see video)
Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Intel have something in common: They all came late to the mobile revolution.
Why? Because they’re companies where management is top-down and responsibility for innovation and change is concentrated among executives with strict bureaucratic control over workers.
That’s got to change, Gary Hamel, a consultant and management educator at the London School of Business, said at the CITE Conference and Exhibition here this week. And he was not alone in his belief that the next revolution in corporate America won’t be technological, it’ll be social.
Businesses are on the cusp of a leadership revolution because millennials moving into the workforce are “the most authority-phobic” generation in history, Hamel said.
“Now, we have a generation with a completely different set of expectations — and probably the most core expectation they have is that if you’re a leader, it’s only because people are wiling to follow,”
Tom Petrocelli, an independent industry analyst, how to best to use technology. Internal social networks, for example, allow lower-level employees to collaborate on innovation. But 40% of knowledge workers never even use them to collaborate because the networks were rolled out without a use case.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Billionaire Tells Americans to Prepare For ‘Financial Ruin’
http://www.moneynews.com/Archives/Trump-Aftershock-American-Economy/2012/11/06/id/462985?PROMO_CODE=103FC-1
The United States could soon become a large-scale Spain or Greece, teetering on the edge of financial ruin.
That’s according to Donald Trump, who painted a very ugly picture of where this country is headed. Trump made the comments during a recent appearance on Fox News’ “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.”
According to Trump, the United States is no longer a rich country. “When you’re not rich, you have to go out and borrow money. We’re borrowing from the Chinese and others. We’re up to $16 trillion in debt.”
He goes on to point out that the downgrade of U.S. debt is inevitable.
“We are going up to $16 trillion [in debt] very soon, and it’s going to be a lot higher than that before he gets finished. When you have [debt] in the $21-$22 trillion, you are talking about a downgrade no matter how you cut it.”
“Right now, frankly, the country isn’t doing well,” Trump added, “Recession may be a nice word.”
But Wiedemer’s outlook for the U.S. economy today makes Trump’s observations seem almost optimistic.
Where Trump sees ballooning debt and a credit downgrade, Wiedemer sees much more widespread economic destruction.
In a recent interview for his newest book Aftershock, Wiedemer says, “The data is clear, 50% unemployment, a 90% stock market drop, and 100% annual inflation . . . starting in 2012.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
“How will they make money?” is the wrong question
https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/a5890c2c2cc0
Seems like every year we hear about a few new consumer networks raising large amounts of money at high valuations. And right on cue, we hear cynics asking, “But how will they ever make money?” let alone “enough money to justify the valuation.”
I like to ask four things:
1. Is there a new behavior here that you can see 100M+ people doing?
2. Is the product evolving in a way where people are getting more and more engaged and committed over time?
3. Will the growth be sustainable?
4. If the product succeeds at scale, can you monetize the key behaviors?
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Primer for Trade Show Exhibitors—How to Treat Attendees
http://controlgeek.net/blog/2013/6/15/a-primer-for-trade-show-exhibitorshow-to-treat-attendees
These are the kinds of booths that I (sometimes literally) run away from:
The Used Car Salesman: Annoying, slimy, aggressive salespeople, who really know nothing
The Scanners: “Can I scan you? It’s just for booth traffic”. Uh, no. I don’t believe you. I hate spam
The Mysteries: If I can’t figure out what segment of the business you’re in by looking at your booth signage within two seconds, you’ve failed. If your banner has “synergy” or related, vague buzzwords in the signage, I’m not going near it. Also, your company should have a memorable name, color scheme, etc.
The Revolutionaries: If your booth signage says you have “revolutionized” anything, I’m moving on.
The Trash Talkers: It’s great, of course, to compare your product to the competition, but bad mouthing the other guy is just bad form and reflects badly on you.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Ventures Stresses Science of Deal, Not Art of the Deal
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/technology/venture-capital-blends-more-data-crunching-into-choice-of-targets.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
SAN FRANCISCO — Here is how the venture capital game used to be played around here:
A friend calls a friend who knows a guy. A meeting is taken. Wine is drunk (at, say, Madera lounge in Menlo Park). A business plan? Sure, whatever. But how does it feel?
This is decidedly not how Google, that apotheosis of our data-driven economy, wants to approach the high-stakes business of investing in the next, well, Google.
Google Ventures and its take on investing represent a new formula for the venture capital business, and skeptics say it will never capture the chemistry — or, perhaps, the magic — of Silicon Valley. Would computer algorithms have bankrolled David Packard or Steve Jobs? Foreseen the folly of Pets.com?
“V.C.’s, just like all of our portfolio companies, need to be analytically intuitive in the modern era of data analytics,” said Matt McIlwain, managing director of Madrona Venture Group, which has invested in companies like Amazon.com and Redfin, the real estate site. “But the intuition part is ultimately the biggest factor. And even with all that, a little good luck goes a long way.”
“If you can’t measure and quantify it, how can you hope to start working on a solution?” said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures.
The firm feeds its algorithms data gleaned from academic literature, past experience and due diligence about start-ups and their founders
Tomi says:
Say What? Wading Through the Nonsense In Microsoft’s Re-Org Memo
http://slashdot.org/story/13/07/13/1644205/say-what-wading-through-the-nonsense-in-microsofts-re-org-memo
Ballmer’s big, gung-ho memo to Microsofties, posted on the company’s website, is chock full of nonsense and corporate executive doublespeak
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Medium is building a new kind of company with no managers
“Traditional management just didn’t agree with me”
“Whenever problems popped up, I’d totally ignore them and pay attention to the people who had them. Suddenly all these issues were just dissolving. I swear it was like a Jedi mind trick.”
With these discoveries under his belt, Stirman wanted to test other theories of management. “No one ever challenged that there was a better way to do things, everything is so tied to who reports to whom,” he says. “But I’m too much of an engineer at heart. I started looking at management like a big A/B test, with a goal of making more data and results-driven decisions.” In his pursuit of new experiments to run, he stumbled on the book “Your Brain at Work,” which espouses what’s come to be known as the SCARF approach.
SCARF stands for status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. “Basically, when a person is honest with themselves, they’re most motivated by one of those qualities,” Stirman explains. “As a manager, you can figure out which one motivates which employee, and reward them accordingly. A lot of managers will look at their team and think, ‘We should do a round of compensation increases because everyone’s been working so hard,’ but this isn’t the best incentive for everyone.”
“It turns out that some people really care about one and don’t really care about the others,”
Medium adopted the Holacracy model about a year ago.
Here are some of the key tenets that Medium embraces:
No people managers. Maximum autonomy.
Organic expansion. When a job gets too big, hire another person.
Tension resolution. Identify issues people are facing, write them down, and resolve them systematically.
Make everything explicit – from vacation policies to decision makers in each area.
Distribute decision-making power and discourage consensus seeking.
Eliminate all the extraneous factors that worry people so they can focus on work.
“The structure is totally built around the work the company needs to achieve its purpose,” Stirman explains. “We don’t have a hierarchy of people, we have a hierarchy of circles.”
Read more: http://firstround.com/article/How-Medium-is-building-a-new-kind-of-company-with-no-managers##ixzz2bHJJhQxg
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is “Leadership” Overvalued?
February 06, 2006 11:04 AM EST
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474976728328
Every society gives its people two educations: an “Academic” education, and an “Environmental” education. The academic part is pretty self explanatory, while the environmental education can be a bit harder to pinpoint– having mostly to do with the lessons we learn from societal values and beliefs.
The company “regretted” that they were not interested in keeping employees who were not “leaders” and, after 12 years, he found himself out of a job.
one of the things I have learned is that every society has its own “personality,” largely based on what that country’s citizens consider to be “important” to their way of life.
Some of the most consistent parts of the “environmental” education taught in the U.S. are the qualities/traits I will describe as “Leadership” and “Competitive Success.” This country excels in these areas, rising above pretty much all other societies. If I needed someone to “take charge” of a situation, I would look to the U.S.A.
What do I mean by that?
Someone who is a brilliant programmer or cook (for example) is not “valued” nearly as highly as a mediocre programmer or cook who “manages” a group of eight other programmers or cooks– or just plain people. The brilliant programmer (or cook, or salesperson) is actually often considered an “underachiever” or an outright “loser” for not wanting to “Manage,” for not wanting to “Be In Charge.” This, in spite of the fact that they are actually doing better work than the less skilled “Manager.”
Interestingly enough, many business texts discuss the concept that “everyone is promoted to their highest level of INcompetence.” At the same time, these words are broadly ignored in practice since almost no company is willing examine (not abandon, just examine) the possibility that “promote to management” may not always be the path of maximum quality and productivity. Yet, in some cases– like my friend’s– lack of “desire to lead” can be the kiss of death.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Comment from http://ask.slashdot.org/story/13/08/07/2015245/ask-slashdot-is-development-leadership-overvalue
Sure, we seem to need managers. And I say “seem” because there is good argument that we don’t really need them. Management, that is, in the form of full time, trained professionals who do nothing but. What we need is leaders (who can be found amongst the “Indians”, even those who profess to have no interest in a management career), and coordinators, who again can be recruited from the rank and file, and which if you structure your projects well is not a full time job in any way shape or form.
But the submitter and article aren’t even asking whether or to we need managers. This is about the idiotic notion that all leaders should be managers, and that management is the only career option after senior engineer, and that there is something wrong with those whom do not choose that career path (except perhaps the few gifted individuals who become principal consultants or CTOs). This appears to be the case in most modern organizations, but if you turn away an experienced engineer just because he is happy not to be a manager, you are wasting talent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Business
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/08/101signals-business/
If you’re drowning in noise, let WIRED’s 101 signals be your lifeline. These are the core nutrients of a good data diet.
These are our favorite sources of news covering the world of business and finance. From macroeconomics to microlending, these folks are all money when it comes to delivering high-value information.
Tomi Engdahl says:
9 Tips To Avoid IT Midcareer Slump
http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/9-tips-to-avoid-it-midcareer-slump/240159848
Don’t let yourself be cast as the IT pro who’s stuck, grumpy or complacent. Consider these midcareer moves.
“Middle management” tends to get a bad rap in the business world, conjuring images of inefficient paper pushers stagnating in their windowless offices. The movie Office Space might come to mind.
“Middle” is also a critical time in a career. It’s the connective tissue between where you started as an IT greenhorn and where you want to end up. So whether you dream of the CIO seat or will be perfectly happy and successful on a lower rung of the corporate ladder, it’s an important time to make smart decisions while avoiding complacency or burnout.
With that in mind, Levy in an interview with InformationWeek shared his ideas and advice for IT pros in the thick of their careers.
He noted that most IT roles begin with an operational component: running a network, building an internal system, managing a move to the cloud. As IT pros progress along their career paths — and especially as they move into middle and upper management roles — they’re increasingly called upon to take on people management and financial and data responsibilities. The last is a relatively new phenomenon, which encompasses the willingness and ability to make data-driven decisions.
Read on for nine moves midcareer IT pros should consider.
Become An Expert
Moving up the corporate chain of command requires increasing levels of proficiency in one or more key areas.
“People who are selected to move up are subject-matter experts on something,” Levy said. “They’re not just OK at things.”
Get Involved Outside Your Company
Outside involvement makes you more recruitable, according to Levy. “You have to be involved with the [IT] community outside your company,” he said.
“Most [people] don’t do that,” Levy said. “[They] do their jobs and go home. They say they don’t have time.”
Learn To Negotiate
Moving up typically requires negotiation skills, whether you’re hammering out a vendor contract, getting the salary you deserve, or simply getting other stakeholders to buy into your vision and decisions.
“As you move up [in an organization], you’re giving presentations, you’re negotiating, you’re trying to convince people that your point is valid and that it will positively impact the performance of the company,” Levy explained.
Make Friends With The CFO
“I think everyone in IT has to become friends with the CFO,” Levy said.
Find A Mentor
“You have to be able to confide in someone,” Levy said
Learn To Have Difficult Conversations
Here’s an area where a trusted mentor can help. Regardless of your goals, Levy said midcareer IT pros must learn to have difficult conversations.
Don’t Become The Grumpy IT Pro
No matter your goals, no matter how many jerks and other petulant personalities you must deal with in your day-to-day job, no matter what — don’t become the grumpy IT pro.
“Changing bad behavior takes time,”
Position Yourself For Success
Levy pointed to three “P’s” of promotion decisions: performance, politics and perception. Note that only one of these is 100% under your control, but that doesn’t mean you can’t influence all three. ”
“Become a mentor. Become a player-coach.”
Seek Greener Pastures
If you’re happy with your current employer, you’ll look for every opportunity to move up internally or ensure the long-term stability of a role you’re already satisfied with.
“Sometimes the best career decision is to leave the company,”
“It’s the pyramid: As you move up, there are only so many places you can go [internally].”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s Lost Decade
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer
Once upon a time, Microsoft dominated the tech industry; indeed, it was the wealthiest corporation in the world. But since 2000, as Apple, Google, and Facebook whizzed by, it has fallen flat in every arena it entered: e-books, music, search, social networking, etc., etc. Talking to former and current Microsoft executives, Kurt Eichenwald finds the fingers pointing at C.E.O. Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates’s successor, as the man who led them astray.
Microsoft’s low-octane swan song was nothing if not symbolic of more than a decade littered with errors, missed opportunities, and the devolution of one of the industry’s innovators into a “me too” purveyor of other companies’ consumer products. Over those years, inconsequential pip-squeaks and onetime zombies—Google, Facebook, Apple—roared ahead, transforming the social-media-tech experience, while a lumbering Microsoft relied mostly on pumping out Old Faithfuls such as Windows, Office, and servers for its financial performance.
Amid a dynamic and ever changing marketplace, Microsoft—which declined to comment for this article—became a high-tech equivalent of a Detroit car-maker, bringing flashier models of the same old thing off of the assembly line even as its competitors upended the world. Most of its innovations have been financial debacles or of little consequence to the bottom line. And the performance showed on Wall Street; despite booming sales and profits from its flagship products, in the last decade Microsoft’s stock barely budged from around $30, while Apple’s stock is worth more than 20 times what it was 10 years ago.
How did this jaw-dropping role reversal happen? How could a company that stands among the most cash-rich in the world, the onetime icon of cool that broke IBM’s iron grip on the computer industry, have stumbled so badly in a race it was winning?
The story of Microsoft’s lost decade could serve as a business-school case study on the pitfalls of success. For what began as a lean competition machine led by young visionaries of unparalleled talent has mutated into something bloated and bureaucracy-laden, with an internal culture that unintentionally rewards managers who strangle innovative ideas that might threaten the established order of things.
In those years Microsoft had stepped up its efforts to cripple competitors, but—because of a series of astonishingly foolish management decisions—the competitors being crippled were often co-workers at Microsoft, instead of other companies. Staffers were rewarded not just for doing well but for making sure that their colleagues failed. As a result, the company was consumed by an endless series of internal knife fights. Potential market-busting businesses—such as e-book and smartphone technology—were killed, derailed, or delayed amid bickering and power plays.
That is the portrait of Microsoft depicted in interviews with dozens of current and former executives, as well as in thousands of pages of internal documents and legal records.
“They used to point their finger at IBM and laugh,” said Bill Hill, a former Microsoft manager. “Now they’ve become the thing they despised.”
“I see Microsoft as technology’s answer to Sears,” said Kurt Massey, a former senior marketing manager. “In the 40s, 50s, and 60s, Sears had it nailed. It was top-notch, but now it’s just a barren wasteland. And that’s Microsoft. The company just isn’t cool anymore.”
Cool is what tech consumers want. Exhibit A: today the iPhone brings in more revenue than the entirety of Microsoft.
No, really.
One Apple product, something that didn’t exist five years ago, has higher sales than everything Microsoft has to offer. More than Windows, Office, Xbox, Bing, Windows Phone, and every other product that Microsoft has created since 1975. In the quarter ended March 31, 2012, iPhone had sales of $22.7 billion; Microsoft Corporation, $17.4 billion.
While Microsoft was once the hippest company on earth, its beginnings could be traced to the Holy Bible for nerds—Popular Electronics.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steve Ball Mer, Microsoft’s head office has received a lot of criticism. In 2006, the introduction of a system of mutual evaluation, the viability of the curve, there may be errors in the largest, estimated Slate .
Blog refers to the last year in Vanity Fair magazine published a comprehensive article in the Microsoft corporate culture. It’s a key problem raised a number of large companies use business management model.
Eichenwald says that without exception, every single one of his interviewing the former and current Microsoft employee named just the viability of the curve, “the most destructive process” within the company.
Slate writer Will Oremus compares Microsoft’s toxic to the system Google’s 20 percent of the practice, which is considered as a good example to encourage innovation. “Why would anyone try to actually be better than any other employee, if he is doing better by making the other shoe laces,”
Comments:
Yeah, I’m GE was back to work.
It’s their very publicly marketed “the worst 5% every year gets fired” practice suppressed totally and completely the whole software development where I was.
Nokia has been using the same system you use, and the results have been very much the same.
Source: Article and comments from
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/selkaanpuukotusta+ja+sabotointia+johtuvatko+microsoftin+ongelmat+quotmyrkyllisestaquot+arviointijarjestelmasta/a924130
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Poisonous Employee-Ranking System That Helps Explain Microsoft’s Decline
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/23/stack_ranking_steve_ballmer_s_employee_evaluation_system_and_microsoft_s.html
There were many reasons for the decline of Microsoft under Steve Ballmer, including, as I wrote this morning, its lack of focus and its habit of chasing trends rather than creating them. But one that’s not obvious to outsiders was the company’s employee evaluation system, known as “stack ranking.” The system—and its poisonous effects on Microsoft’s corporate culture—was best explained in an outstanding Vanity Fair feature by Kurt Eichenwald last year.
Anyone interested in Microsoft or business administration should read the full piece.
But here’s an excerpt from the part where Eichenwald explains stack ranking:
At the center of the cultural problems was a management system called “stack ranking.” Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees. The system—also referred to as “the performance model,” “the bell curve,” or just “the employee review”—has, with certain variations over the years, worked like this: every unit was forced to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, then good performers, then average, then below average, then poor. …
For that reason, executives said, a lot of Microsoft superstars did everything they could to avoid working alongside other top-notch developers, out of fear that they would be hurt in the rankings. And the reviews had real-world consequences: those at the top received bonuses and promotions; those at the bottom usually received no cash or were shown the door. …
“The behavior this engenders, people do everything they can to stay out of the bottom bucket,” one Microsoft engineer said. “People responsible for features will openly sabotage other people’s efforts. One of the most valuable things I learned was to give the appearance of being courteous while withholding just enough information from colleagues to ensure they didn’t get ahead of me on the rankings.” Worse, because the reviews came every six months, employees and their supervisors—who were also ranked—focused on their short-term performance, rather than on longer efforts to innovate. …
So while Google was encouraging its employees to spend 20 percent of their time to work on ideas that excited them personally, Ballmer was inadvertently encouraging his to spend a good chunk of their time playing office politics. . Why try to outrun the bear when you can just tie your co-workers’ shoelaces?
Microsoft wasn’t the first company to adopt this sort of ranking system. It was actually popularized by Jack Welch at GE, where it was known as “rank and yank.” Welch defended the practice to the Wall Street Journal in a January 2012 article, saying, “This is not some mean system—this is the kindest form of management. [Low performers] are given a chance to improve, and if they don’t in a year or so, you move them out. “
Tomi Engdahl says:
So you think you can CEO? A futile and unnecesary attempt to defend the internet’s most endangered species
http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/30/4674566/so-you-think-you-can-ceo-a-futile-and-unnecesary-attempt-to-defend
It’s hunting season. I know it is, because it’s the internet, so it’s always hunting season. And in the hunting ground of the internet the number one big furry target is the CEO of the major tech company. In this post I ask you to think before you take aim at these beautiful beasts.
A lot of hoo-hah is made of tech CEO’s and their incompetence. A lot. Journalists, pundits or commenters: we all delight in taking a swing at those at the top. And it matters not whether you’re Ballmer, Cook, Heins or Mayer, you’re in the firing line for pretty much every decision – or non-decision – that’s made.
Maybe these CEO’s really are this incompetent. I find that hard to believe, but it’s possible. Or perhaps it’s that in our 140-character-or-less, thumb-up-thumb-down culture we would rather state an extreme without explanation.
Whatever it is, these summaries leave me unsatisfied.
f these people are as pathetic as we claim, how did they manage to get anywhere near the top, let alone numero uno? Given the level of incompetence suggested, it seems miraculous that these companies have ever been profitable. And if it’s all up to the CEO, why are other executives and board members paid unimaginable amounts of money? It seems contradictory: even if it is all the CEO’s fault, isn’t it the job of the board to keep the CEO accountable?
My opinion – granted, a lay-opinion from my easy chair, with no skin in the game at all – is this: the relationship between the CEO and the board, given the context of the major shareholders, is much more important than simply the actions or personality of the woman or man at the top. It’s about risk and trust, it’s about a group of talented, creative, opinionated, influential people finding a way to coalesce around one strategy.
This position can’t be reduced to ‘the CEO’s an idiot’, and that’s deliberate.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hey Gen Y’er, want a promotion? Communicate like an old guy
http://www.itworld.com/career/371148/hey-gen-y-er-want-promotion-communicate-old-guy
Before I offend anyone by the title of this column, by old guy, I mean people like me, Baby Boomers in senior management positions. Certainly, this includes people of both genders, but I’m male so thus the column is named.
In recent months, I have been asked by many Baby Boomers how to properly communicate, motivate, lead, and retain Generation Y age employees. The reason for these questions is that there are huge differences between Baby Boomers and Gen Y’ers in regard to attitudes on work/life balance, comfort with technology, personal communication styles, motivations, current stage of life and a number of other factors.
All that said, there are a number of things Gen Y’ers and Gen X’ers can do to make Baby Boomers take notice and help them get that wanted promotion.
Use the phone: By use the phone I mean call them, don’t text them
Be polite: My generation grew up being told to say “please” and “thank you”
Return email etiquette: When you receive an email from a Baby Boomer, reply using a similar format.
Spell out full words: When I see an email like “R U going today?” I think to myself that my kids write this way.
Discuss technology at an appropriate level: As you read this, note that it’s coming from a life-long techie, former CIO and current CTO of a company I started. It’s easy for Gen X’ers and Gen Y’ers that grew up using technology to technically overpower those who did not grow up on technology. We are digital immigrants and you are digital natives. There is a difference.
Work hard: Baby Boomers have an extremely strong work ethic
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Makes a Brand Cool?
http://saydaily.com/2013/08/what-makes-a-brand-cool.html
By traditional marketing measures, Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance was a huge success: it was one of the most tweeted events of the year, generating up to 306,000 tweets per minute and 4.5 million social media mentions, which is more than the blackout or the Super Bowl. Miley’s just released new single jumped to the top of the Movers and Shakers list on Amazon on the news.
Sometimes using the word “cool” can be cool. Sometimes it doesn’t even mean cool.
It can also be genre specific.
When something is hot, it may not be cool. Hot oozes appeal. While one person’s hot may be another’s cool, hot requires kindling or it can easily burn out. When something hot remains vibrant and this phenomenon graduates to something sustainable, it might become cool.
When something is hot, it may not be cool. Hot oozes appeal. While one person’s hot may be another’s cool, hot requires kindling or it can easily burn out. When something hot remains vibrant and this phenomenon graduates to something sustainable, it might become cool.
Is the legacy of cool a burden?
So how can a brand get there? Half of wisdom is knowing your limitations. The other half is knowing when, where and how to ignore those limitations. It’s a delicate balance, but when you solve for that, it can be pretty cool.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I. Dar-Nimrod: Coolness: An Empirical Investigation
JournalofIndividual Differences
2012;Vol. 33(3):175–185© 2012 Hogrefe Publishing
Original Article
Coolness:AnEmpiricalInvestigation
http://www.academia.edu/1517960/Coolness_An_Empirical_Investigation
Tomi Engdahl says:
Old article from Talouselämä 28.4.2011 11:39
Now, I no longer see Kallasvuo, but a new superstar CEO Stephen Elopia, which has come to save Nokia from the morass in which the company over the last few years there has been sunk.
Elop is a compelling performer. He is assertive, speak clearly and are able to take their audience. He almost captivates his audience.
Wow, what a convincing leader in that, I think.
It is easy to forget that charisma and conviction occurring Director of lies always a risk. Such a leader can not get over with the audience, was his message to the contents of any.
History has several examples of how a charismatic leader can even lead to. Stephen Elopia obviously can not be compared with any tyrants, but if you look at the level of the general public charming phenomenon, some similarities can be found.
Fortunately, a large part of the range of nokia bullshit talk alarm is so sensitive that even Elop’s like a skilled performer may not be just about anything through – at least not anymore.
Mr. Elop of Nokia beginning its life as the advantage that the contrast predecessor was so huge. Convincingly set out in fine words was easy to believe. Now, when Elop has been around for quite some time, everything will not go through.
Talking about the new organizational culture and the creation of new patterns of behavior. Sounds great, but what this is really changed?
Well, not exactly nothing!
Nokia is a classic example of a company which is a magnet, attracted to the narcissistic leaders. The number of managers at all levels are huge, and the climber is enough for every occasion. The better you know how to polish your image, the higher you go up.
Errors and problems covered and honor the success of others omitaan for your self. In addition, it is important to lick the big leaders of the back sides of their sentences in their repeating monotonously: “Change … transparency … accountability …”
Now that the organization point to the usual amount of new, leadership roultette is hot. The beasts are fighting over carrion, and the best pieces.
E-mail drops harvase day messages, describing the old leaders of new appointments – while ordinary workers live in constant uncertainty it in their workplace relationship.
At times like this bullshit will rise to record levels. One day, mid-level managers keeps saying he was “committed to implement the project to the end,” we read in the next day to have exchanged their new organization and the team failed to fend for themselves.
When obsoleted by the new leader talks about the new commitment, subordinates, the audience is laughing. Yeah, right!
Source: http://www.taloussanomat.fi/kolumnit/2011/04/28/nokialainen-pitakaa-tunkkinne/20116013/145
Tomi Engdahl says:
Can a person become allergic to a blank speech ?
The crisis company sale: a great opportunity , early modern period , a significant turning point. Director People get fired : good understanding , a confidential agreement for new challenges . Line – humans do not have a job : Thanks for your interest in our company , we will keep your application in mind.
A person appointed for the management job: the humble unique challenge , with emphasis on the quality and continuity , trust , relying on . Mostly familiar about their whereabouts : what could this , pretty nice , but I hurry to keep this here .
Any type of communication is available inconceivably large , the truth and the importance of a lot less. There is a lot of speech, that does not mean anything, and the speech, the purpose of which is to cover it , which actually is the case.
This communication produced by a professional , but others have learned. Condominium meetings are no longer solve moisture problems in the basement , but the wetting of the resulting challenges . I’m tempted to say that the devil , there is water, but the saying would ruin carefully enshrined in a positive atmosphere.
Media is plagued by a story looking thing : there is text , there are pictures , but the mind does not remain correct for any up to the unanswered questions.
A “story looking thing” is best harmless, at worst, boring time thief. It’s quick to make , receive and nourish meaningless as much as the wild oat.
Artificial communication creates a culture in which the most important thing is, how would things look , not how they really are. The price is a kind of alienation from the real feelings and meanings . They are left to be quessed or just ignored.
Source: http://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/Tyhj%C3%A4+puhe+piinaa/a1378789639872?ref=hs-hitaat-a-2
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Slashdot: Are ‘Rock Star’ Developers a Necessity?
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/13/09/11/2019245/ask-slashdot-are-rock-star-developers-a-necessity
“Do you think so called ‘rock star’ developers are necessary at every company? Personally, I don’t think so, and I equate it to not needing a college degree to work at Walmart. If you give every problem a complexity value from 1 to 10, and your problems never get higher than a 6 or 7, do you need people capable of solving the 10s?”
Comments:
The term “rockstar” is subjective and only douchebags use it. You could be considered a rockstar because you say you are bringing those around you “up” and are probably doing that by learning and training others about what you learn.
Specifically, though, if they are “difficult to work with”, then they probably aren’t the best programmers. In that case, “Rock Star” may actually be a good term… people that are extremely talented at doing something, but do so by their own rules, frequently high, often attention grabbing and lacking focus or team spirit
What you do need are top tier developers, forget what you call them. You can get to the top tier by having raw talent, or by being well disciplined. Working well with others is a boon; building code that is reusable, well factored, documentable and maintainable. If you have five team members each with five different strengths but no one-developer-to-rule-them-all, you can still build a fantastic team and great software. You need programmers who can mentor so that the rest of the team can improve. Toss the people that don’t work well on a team, and while you’re at it toss the managers that prefer hard-to-work-with people, or that can’t manage teams of normal people. This is particularly important if your software is going to grow… individual “rock stars” don’t scale.
I’ve known a lot of top programmers, and consider myself among them. Personally, I like to hire rock-star coders right out of college, before they have a chance to develop all those bad anti-social habits. I love it when a team of awesome programmers all work together effortlessly.
Unfortunately, the typical experience for an awesome coder is to find that he’s carrying the load by himself and getting help from coworkers that’s slightly worse than no help at all. There’s no mentor to show him how to work with his team, and he quickly becomes a lone wolf coder. Once a lone wolf coder develops his style of coding all by himself, it’s pretty darned hard to ever get him integrated into an efficient team.
You’re conflating two unrelated things: Competence and attitude. You might find The No Asshole Rule an interesting source. People who can’t cooperate with other people are not a necessity, no matter how amazing they are.
I just read the book Multipliers [amazon.com]. It is targeted towards managers, but I think it is useful information for just about anyone. This dev (who has so far shown no interest in joining management) certainly took it to heart. The book compares “diminishers” and “multipliers”.
Diminishers, like your company rockstar. They need to know everything and have the last word. They can appear to be a team player when they’re really just using people around them to prop themselves up. They strike fear into people who challenge them. They make large decisions by themselves, or take input from a small inner circle of people. They are at their A game, but diminish other people’s output and potential. When people work with diminishers, they feel like they’re giving 50%. It is a net loss.
Multipliers create an environment where people can give input with confidence, make mistakes, and learn from them. This doesn’t mean they are soft. In return for this they expect greatness and weed out those who can’t give it or who can’t work with the team. They identify genius (described in the book as an innate, exceptional ability which someone may not even realize they have) and try to flourish it. A multiplier can still be at their A game, but puts emphasis toward helping others grow. When people work with multipliers, they feel like they’re giving 150%.
It sounds a lot like some management BS and I’m sure I’m not selling it well,
Tomi Engdahl says:
CIO = Chief Officer of Failure
It projects both private and publicly talking about comes to mind classic Wiio first law: Communication usually fails – except by accident.
Wiio the first law of the lesser-known point by the way, says that if you are a self-satisfied of communication, so communication is sure to fail.
The risk of failure, despite the communication and IT projects can not be omitted.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/blogit/CIO_100_blogi/cio++chief+failure+officer/a929880
Tomi Engdahl says:
The model will come and save
After all, it is a good and effective operating model, such as ITIL, COBIT’s, Information Management model, Prince2′s, ISPL’s and dsdm’s, the best part.
ICT Standard guideline development context and colleagues talking to me, however, brightened the real benefit of the new approach.
Plain common approach to mobile development has been the creation of value in itself. Enthusiastic and committed people have invested everything in order to achieve common objectives and shared their expertise.
Although I myself have participated in the past few years a number of development projects that have been developed approaches to information management activities, I have only this most recent trip learned that, in the end, however, it is people, their relationships and interaction skills, as well as executive ability.
Models and frameworks to guide the activities of information management by setting rules and guidelines for action. People’s task is to awaken these strategies to life and to create a big heart.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/blogit/ict_standard_forum/toimintamalli+tulee+ja+pelastaa/a930407
Tomi Engdahl says:
Postmortem of a Venture-backed Startup
Lessons Learned from the rise and fall of @Sonar
https://medium.com/p/72c6f8bec7df
For those unfamiliar, Sonar Media Inc. was a mobile app created to help make the world a friendlier place. Our mobile app buzzed in your pocket when friends were near and ushered in a new wave of “Ambient Social Networking” companies. Downloaded by millions of people all over the world, Sonar was promoted by Apple and Google in 100+ countries, won numerous awards such as runner-up at TechCrunch Disrupt and Ad:Tech Best Mobile Startup, raised nearly $2,000,000 from prominent angels and VCs, and was featured on more than 300 publications including the New York Times, CNN, CNBC, TechCrunch, and TIME.
And yet, we failed.
We did lots of thing right and lots of things wrong at Sonar.
The Search For Product/Market Fit
“Make something people want.” —Paul Graham
Listening to your users: False positives
“I would use your product if only you had X feature” is a dangerous signal to follow. Users do their best to anticipate what they want before they’ve seen it but, like entrepreneurs, they are often wrong.
Listening to your users: False negatives
Removing friction from existing user behaviors (e.g. checkins) almost always has a higher ROI than building castles in the sky (e.g. hypothesizing about your API). Find all the dead ends/local maxima in your current products before building new ones!
Growth vs. Engagement
Growth is the only thing that matters if you are building a social network. Period. Engagement is great but you aren’t even going to get the meeting unless your top-line numbers reach a certain threshold
Things I Wish I Spent Less Time On
“Focus is saying no to 1,000 good ideas.” — Steve Jobs
Events
Events are for research, business development, and hiring; NOT for getting to 10,000,000 downloads.
Brands & Agencies
Be polite, but postpone brand and agency “intros” until you’ve built your own audience. If you build it, they will come (and pay).
Side projects
You do not have 20% time. Identify your top three priorities. Throw away numbers two and three.
Competition
Be steady at the wheel. The only way one startup can kill another startup is by getting into the other’s head and leading them off a cliff.
Selling the company
Companies don’t get sold, they get bought. The best way to get bought is to build something of value.
Misalignment
As John Burroughs said, “A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.” Avoid bad relationships like the plague
It’s All About People
“The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important – and then get out of their way while they do it.” — Jack Welch
Be practical about team building
In the beginning, established people probably won’t work with you.
Culture as your cofounder
Think of culture as a cofounder that is present when you are not.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The power of thinking big
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/analog-ic-startup/4417391/The-power-of-thinking-big
“This product will capture 50% of the market for this function because it is so much better than anything else out there.” Greg passionately says to the team. Greg is right. If he can design what he is proposing, we will be very successful in this product category.
Greg designs the IC in what seems like a day, and he begins running simulations. Lo and behold, his new idea and architecture work just as he proposed. We are likely to win big!
Believe me, Greg has had some epic failures.
One more thing about thinking big is you need an environment that allows you to think big and fail. Yes, that’s right. The environment must allow you fail and not get your head chopped off. There is no faster way to stop innovation, creativity, and thinking big than chopping someone’s head off if they fail.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Interviews that work
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/analog-ic-startup/4418095/Interviews-that-work
You may have seen a recent interview with Google’s VP of people operations in the NY Times where he explains that they discovered that the interview questions that Google is famous for, you know the teasers like “why are manhole covers round” or “how many golf balls fit in a school bus”, etc, those questions have no value in predicting if a candidate is going to be successful in her or his job.
I can’t say that I’m surprised about anything other than that it took this long to come to that conclusion. Brainteaser questions presumably are supposed to project a company image that attracts smart, think-outside-the-box type people. But that doesn’t mean the people you select this way are a good fit for the job in question.
He explains that you get a lot of information about a candidate by asking the simple question: “Can you describe your Most Significant Accomplishment?”, and then as interviewer, you follow up with a lot of fact finding: ask for specifics, what measurable results were achieved, and what actions the candidate specifically did perform.
There is one more, perhaps obvious, point I need to make: almost everyone at Touchstone was referred to us by another employee. Good people want to work with other good people and that personal recommendation is a better predictor for a successfully filled opening than anything else.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Windows 8 is not hip?
“Is there anyone here that would be upgraded to Windows 8 for work environment?”
None of the hand of several tens of assent does not rise out of a professor Matti Rossi last week seminar on the public’s question.
Aalto University professor summed up the situation: if the companies do not want something to say to young people, the future does not look bright.
Windows 8 operating environment is annealed specifically to the company point of view. The idea of the equipment seamlessly between Windows 8 user experience sounds great, but byodin and cloud era, it may be old-fashioned.
Stories of the companies that would actually take the benefits out of Windows 8′s philosophy is hard to find.
Microsoft’s big problem is that the image is so corporate-led. And consumers – not businesses – solve today’s devices of the future.
Many things would be easier for businesses, if we were able to predict the future winner of the platforms.
Can Microsoft’s phones then become consumers pets? Redmond giant have to do extra hard work. Marketing people and brand makers requireds erasures of the wisdom of the portrayed old Microsoft.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/blogit/uutiskommentti/miksi+windows+8+ei+ole+hip/a933312
Tomi Engdahl says:
Even the cloud service can not be sold without contacts
“Finland has a strong IT expertise and the best people. In the international market determines the success of cloud computing, however, sales expertise, “says LeadDesk new CEO Olli Nokso-Koivisto, 29,
“The importance of personal contacts is not even a weathered cloud b-to-b sales. The seller must know who they can contact, and how the customer wants to buy. Too often it happens that the seller does not offer the customer the time of purchase, “he says.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/edes+pilvipalvelua+ei+myyda+ilman+kontakteja/a931820
Tomi Engdahl says:
Researchers Show How Easy It Is To Manipulate Online Opinions
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/10/02/2212202/researchers-show-how-easy-it-is-to-manipulate-online-opinions
“A recent study shows that a single random up-vote, randomly chosen, created a herding behavior in ratings that resulted in a 25% increase in the ratings but the negative manipulation had no effect.”
“So in business and society, culture, politics, we found substantial susceptibility to positive herding, whereas in general news, economics, IT, we found no such herding effects in the positive or negative direction.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
17 Tips For Working With A Disorganized Boss
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/09/26/17-tips-for-working-with-a-disorganized-boss/
We all have our moments of “multitask overload”–especially managers. But working with a perpetually disorganized boss can be exasperating and even detrimental to your workplace productivity.
“You may feel like you’re spinning your wheels,” says Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert and author of Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant; How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job. “There can be many false starts if your boss hasn’t thought through a project or the resources required for it; if he hasn’t set priorities well; or if he can’t get back to you because everything appears to be in disarray. And if you follow orders based on a disorganized initiative, a chaotic domino effect can occur within your department.” This work style can negatively affect your sense of accomplishment and performance, she adds. “And it can bring down an entire team.”
Sara Sutton Fell, CEO and founder of FlexJobs, agrees. “It can be extremely frustrating to deal with a disorganized boss, because their disorganization often trickles (or even pours) down on you. It can hurt team morale, and it reflects poorly on everyone.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
In Praise of Micromanagement
http://slashdot.org/story/13/10/03/2216200/in-praise-of-micromanagement
“Sydney Finkelstein writes at BBC that Steve Jobs, Mickey Drexler, and Jeff Bezos all have something in common. They are all builders of giant brands, very successful, and each is (or was) ‘an unmitigated, unapologetic, micromanager!’ The modern executive is taught — in business schools and in many jobs — that to manage people effectively is to delegate, and then get out of the way. But it’s not delegate and forget says Finkelstein; it must be delegate and be intimately involved with what happens next. Micromanagers must be selective. You can’t delve into the details of everything”
“One key is that micromanagers must be experts. What could be worse than a manager immersed in the details who really doesn’t know his stuff?”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The First Personal Platform—for Everything
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/first-personal-platform%E2%80%94-everything
Maybe the biggest thing that ever happened to Linux—at least scale-wise—is virtualization. As I recall, virtualization first materialized in a big commercial way with IBM, which started by putting many Linux instances on System z mainframes.
IBM didn’t call those mainframes “clouds”, but that’s what it hosted. Now we have clouds of clouds of Linux all over the place. Nothing could be more widespread and ordinary. (Of Netcraft’s ten most reliable hosting company sites for June of this year, eight are Linux and two are FreeBSD
Now think about the Internet of Things, often abbreviated IoT. It is generally assumed today that the Internet of Things will require embedded smarts. But in fact, any thing can have a cloud, whether the thing has embedded smarts or not.
By abstracting intelligence away from physical things, we can unburden those things of the need to be intelligent in themselves. In fact, we can enlarge to absolute the variety of things that can have intelligence
Likewise, any company (such as Canon, LaCrosse, Sangean and Garmin) can give every product it sells a unique cloud of its own, with its own QR code, and transfer ownership of that cloud to the customer along with the product itself. If the customer welcomes a relationship with the company, and the company agrees to the customer’s terms of engagement (such as, “respect the privacy of this communication channel in the following ways”), the whole “own cycle” of a product becomes a much richer experience for both the customer and the company. The QR code then becomes what’s called a “TalkTag”—meaning that its purpose is to serve as a way for the customer to signal his or her interest in talking to the company.
Once that happens, both sides can learn far more from each other, in far better ways. If the product is the platform for a genuine two-way relationship, both company and customer are in far better positions to learn from each other. Companies can update manuals and provide notices of firmware updates. Customers can tell companies directly what’s working or not working, how the product might be improved and what new products the company might consider making.
The result, if all goes according to plan, is a true Internet of Things and the reframing of business around fully useful relationships between customers and companies—or, for that matter, between anybody and anything.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The IT Talent Problem
http://ww2.cfo.com/it-value/2013/05/the-it-talent-problem/
Business-savvy IT executives can be hard to come by, and that’s a big problem if your company relies on technology to exist (it does). Maybe it’s time to start growing your own.
Enter the 2010s. With cloud, mobility, big data and consumerization, companies are in even greater need of technology talent than they were in the late 1990s, and that talent is in even shorter supply. Computer science enrollments are at an all-time low; baby boomer workers are retiring and taking all of that legacy-systems knowledge with them; and Silicon Valley is hot again. Would that young, brilliant developer rather join the next Zynga or upgrade the payroll systems at your insurance company?
If you had a magic wand, what one talent problem would you solve? Responses poured in and addressed challenges around recruiting, developing leaders, and retaining the talent that they currently have. But more than 70 percent of readers would use their magic wand to do only one thing: give business skills to their technologists. Their people, they worry, are so narrowly focused on the technology that they fail to see the forest through the trees. They do not understand the business context of their technology work, nor can they have a meaningful discussion with the leaders of the business areas their technology supports.
This lack of business-savvy technology talent is a serious problem for every company that relies on technology to exist (which is, of course, every company). Those beautifully “blended executives,” who can talk technology in one meeting and can talk business in another, are rare birds. Yet with technology moving directly into the revenue stream of your company, you need them, and your need is only going to increase.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Playing To Win: Mobile Gamification Done Right
http://www.businessinsider.com/mobile-gamification-done-right-2013-7?utm_source=House&utm_term=RR&utm_campaign=RR
Gamification, or the use of game elements to promote desired behaviors among customers and employees, has been a popular business strategy for decades. Loyalty programs, cereal box prizes, employee-of-the-month schemes, hidden tokens within video games and applications — these are all examples.
But the always-on mobile age has vastly expanded opportunities for gamification. Integration with social networks means these experiences are shared with friends, acquaintances and co-workers. A smartphone-carrying employee or consumer might be drawn into a gamified experience at any time, wherever they are.
In fact, gamification represents the fusion of four trends: the explosion of social media usage, the mobile revolution, the rise of big data, and the emergence of wearable computing. Already, marketers, enterprises, and even governments are using gamification to achieve and expand their goals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why sell 5 million when you can sell 5 billion?
Consumers bought from online stores last year, more than 1000 billion dollars , an increase of 22% from the previous year. This trend should be utilized.
Trading online is – for Finnish companies – in principle, a global business. Why sell 5 million when you can sell 5 billion ?
Hand on my heart, all the countries of the world, how many is a Finnish create better conditions for international web marketing success stories?
1 We are by nature international
As a small and progressive nation of global commerce is much more natural than the Finns, for example Yanks, German, or Chinese.
2 We know how to do the global digital business
In the 90′s created the world’s largest consumer electronics product Alongside business with marketing and branding is everything. 2000s möimme virtual furniture world for teenagers. Recently we sold our digital world full of birds, the internet, etc. clans Finland is not a cold and distant, and not necessarily the least expensive.
3 Self-Service = Made in Finland
Online business is self-service. Self again is probably just invented in Finland, for good or bad. In the 90′s we were the world’s number one online banking.
The service is created by tuning firm’s core machinery, logistics, my website, and customer loyalty – in top shape, so that the customer self-service experience is not only fluent in private.
4 Finland is a good test of the market
Finns are among the world’s top users of on-line shopping . There are also strong competitors such as Amazon, eBay, Swedish Kinnevik (Zalando, CDON, Nelly.com, etc.), the British ASOS. That is why Finland is a good place to test marketing. What works here, certainly works elsewhere.
5 Finnish trusted worldwide
Online trust is a hard currency. When e-commerce, among other things, price, range and availability are correct, Finnish turns in favor of the merchant. World-line people appreciate our honesty.
Or do not they?
Some people prefer to opt for the second alternative: a global and handed it to the other side of the Finnish retail trade.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/viisaat/SAS/miksi+myyda+5+miljoonalle+kun+voi+myyda+5+miljardille/a936389
Tomi Engdahl says:
The IT Talent Problem
http://ww2.cfo.com/it-value/2013/05/the-it-talent-problem/
Business-savvy IT executives can be hard to come by, and that’s a big problem if your company relies on technology to exist (it does). Maybe it’s time to start growing your own.
Way back in 2000, just before the dot-com bust, I wrote a weekly column for CIO magazine, and I spent months covering “the technology workforce crisis.” The big issue was the cap that the U.S. government had put on H‑1B visas and the strong need that companies had for developers and other technologists. Then along came the dot-com bust, and the news (and my column) was all about layoffs and identifying the real goats in the Internet debacle.
As the economy recovered from the bust, we all took a more balanced view of technology hiring. Companies needed good technology people, and they were able to recruit them pretty easily or augment their teams offshore.
Enter the 2010s. With cloud, mobility, big data and consumerization, companies are in even greater need of technology talent than they were in the late 1990s, and that talent is in even shorter supply. Computer science enrollments are at an all-time low; baby boomer workers are retiring and taking all of that legacy-systems knowledge with them; and Silicon Valley is hot again. Would that young, brilliant developer rather join the next Zynga or upgrade the payroll systems at your insurance company?
This lack of business-savvy technology talent is a serious problem for every company that relies on technology to exist (which is, of course, every company). Those beautifully “blended executives,” who can talk technology in one meeting and can talk business in another, are rare birds. Yet with technology moving directly into the revenue stream of your company, you need them, and your need is only going to increase.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner’s Dark Vision for Tech, Jobs
http://www.cio.com/article/741312/Gartner_s_Dark_Vision_for_Tech_Jobs?page=1&taxonomyId=3123
Science fiction writers have long told of great upheaval as machines replace people. Now, so is research firm Gartner. The difference is that Gartner, which provides technology advice to many of the world’s largest companies, is putting in dates and recommending immediate courses of action.
- Science fiction writers have long told of great upheaval as machines replace people. Now, so is research firm Gartner. The difference is that Gartner, which provides technology advice to many of the world’s largest companies, is putting in dates and recommending immediate courses of action.
The job impacts from innovation are arriving rapidly, according to Gartner. Unemployment, now at about 8%, will get worse. Occupy Wall Street-type protests will arrive as early as next year as machines increasingly replace middle-class workers in high cost, specialized jobs. In businesses, CIOs in particular, will face quandaries as they confront the social impact of their actions.
Machines have been replacing people since the agricultural revolution, so what’s new here?
In previous technological leaps, workers could train for a better job and achieve an improvement in their standard of living. But the “Digital Industrial Revolution,” as the analyst firm terms it, is attacking jobs at all levels, not just the lower rung. Smart machines, for example, can automate tasks to the point where they become self-learning systems.
Smart machines “are diagnosing cancer, they are prescribing cancer treatments,” said Kenneth Brandt, a Gartner analyst. These machines “can even deliver [treatment] to the room of the patient.”
Gartner sees all kinds of jobs being affected: Transportation systems, construction work, mining warehousing, health care, to name a few. With IT costs at 4% of sales for all industries, there’s very little left to cut in IT, but there is a great opportunity to cut labor.
The companies on the leading edge of this trend include Amazon, which spent $775 million last year to acquire Kiva Systems, a company that makes robots used in warehouses. Google is also on the forefront, with its effort to develop driverless cars.
This shift will affect employment, said Brandt, at Gartner’s Symposium ITxpo. “We believe there will be persistent and higher unemployment.”
The broader intent of the research is to get CIOs to consider the impact of smart machines on their organizations, along with the rise of new positions, such as chief digital officer. Gartner recommends that businesses move quickly to form teams to focus on the issue of smart machines.
From 2020 to 2030, “you are going to see the first human-free enterprise — nobody is involved in it, it’s all software, communicating and negotiating with one another,” said Diane Morello, a Gartner analyst, who has looked at how smart machines will reshape employment.
Morello said companies increasingly will recognize that smart machines are part of the workforce. “Human beings are not the only workforce,” she said.
“It’s definitely easy to see a dystopian future,”
While the first phase of the revolution may benefit the robber barons, or in this case the Silicon Valley titans, Hansen said, “eventually there is a huge economic potential that actually dwarfs the initial potential” as people figure out how “to tap into all these unused resources” or people idled by changes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to get a recruiter to notice you on LinkedIn
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20131011-try-try-again-on-linkedin
After Sandy Baldonado applied for a number of promising positions via professional networking site LinkedIn and received no response, she began to wonder: was her resume being purposely or accidentally overlooked? Her marketing skills were a fit. But in some cases, Baldonado wouldn’t hear a peep only to see the same job posted again a short time later.
“Should I reapply or try and contact the hiring manager?” Baldonado wondered. So far, the San Francisco Bay Area-based branding and digital marketing specialist has taken a wait-and-see approach. “I don’t want to come across as too aggressive,” she said.
Baldonado is likely not alone in her mystification of how to navigate this new online world of job searching. The explosion in popularity of professional networking sites, such as US-based LinkedIn and Germany-based Xing, has brought with it a whole host of new do’s and don’ts when it comes to proper protocol for job seekers.
The reach of these sites is tremendous. LinkedIn has more than 238 million members in 200 countries and territories, while Xing has more than 13 million members mostly in Europe.
About 72% of companies in the US now use social media to advertise their jobs
Try, try again?
Reapplying for the job may not get you the interview you want — especially if it didn’t work the first time around
“To increase your chances of getting picked from the bunch, make sure your LinkedIn public profile is complete and create an online resume to use as a supplement to your normal application packet,” Ringger said.
Put aside worries about appearing overly aggressive. “Don’t be apprehensive in using these methods when applying for jobs,” said Ringger. “LinkedIn and other platforms are there for networking and connecting.”
Read the signs
Consider how active the hiring manager or recruiter is on social media to determine whether you should follow-up via LinkedIn or a personal email to the recruiter’s work account.
If the hiring manager has, say, more than 200 connections and has robust recent activity, it’s likely he or she regularly uses LinkedIn as a hiring source.
But there’s an even better approach than sending an InMail: find a mutual LinkedIn connection to introduce you, suggested Karalyn Brown, founder of Australia-based job site InterviewIQ. “That way you are referred in via a trusted source,” she said.
Small dose interaction
Hiring managers really do want to talk to job applicants, according to InterviewIQ’s Brown.
“The person approaching them needs to state very specifically why they want to work for them and the value they can add,” said Brown. “Otherwise a contact is not much better than spam.”
Don’t assume the worst
Just because a position is reposted doesn’t mean that you weren’t a good candidate for the job. The position could be under review or the company may have hired someone and that person turned out not to be the right fit, according to LinkedIn’s Williams.
“More often than not, they simply haven’t filled the position yet and your due diligence will put you on top of the pile,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
How LinkedIn Got $10M by Making Weakness Look Like Strength
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/secret-to-linkedin-success/
Success for successful companies has a way of seeming inevitable after the fact, especially in tech. How can a great new idea not win? It’s easy to forget that success is not magic: It’s manufactured, one piece at a time, often with a lot of heavy lifting.
Case in point: LinkedIn, the company whose founder has offered a rare glimpse into how his company’s success was built.
Reid Hoffman this week posted online the slide deck he used to raise a crucial $10 million venture capital round for his business-focused social network back in 2004, the same year Facebook launched.
But if there’s one key takeaway for today’s entrepreneurs, it may be that sparse, unflattering hard data can be made incredibly convincing with the right spin.
So how to convince the VCs at Greylock Partners to give LinkedIn a shot? Well, one way was to make the best of the numbers on hand —- to present them in a flattering light.
Yes, LinkedIn’s 900,000-strong user base paled in comparison to the 10.5 million users on Friendster, the 2.5 million on MySpace, or even the 1.3 million on Orkut.
But it turned out that LinkedIn had added 800,000 of those 900,000 users in just seven months. More impressive still, the company had promised the investors in its prior venture capital round, a so-called “Series A” round worth $4.7 million, that it would grow to 400,000 users over the same period.
So Hoffman had wildly exceeded the expectations he set with prior investors. “Here’s what I said before, and here’s how I did.”
Today, social networks like Nextdoor, Pinterest, Path, and Foursquare find themselves trying to raise financing in a situation quite similar to where Hoffman found himself in 2004: A nice growth trajectory and a great vision, but little to no revenue and few users compared with bigger, less focused social networking competitors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Slashdot: As a Programmer/Geek, Should I Learn Business?
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/13/10/16/2144216/ask-slashdot-as-a-programmergeek-should-i-learn-business
“During my career I’ve always been focused on learning new technologies and trending programming languages. I’ve made good money at it, but I’m not sure what the next step is. I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life.”
“I’d appreciate advice from any fellow geeks who are making (or have made) that change.”
yes
Slightly longer answer:
The things that probably baffle you about the leadership where you are at, the decisions that seem to make no sense, and the troglodytes that seem to have power will make more sense to you after learning a bit about business.
As someone with a physics degree, who does marketing and product management, I self taught myself a lot of what is needed to function in these spheres. It isn’t hard, but it will seem alien. It doesn’t require more than a modicum of common sense (once you learn to not sneer at it) and the ability to do basic arithmetic. I occasionally break out a PDE to model a pricing structure, and am met with amazement (particularly when it turns out to accurately model the true system response). But I am a geek like that.
After decades of software development I went to business school. Some take aways
(1) Business school is probably not what you think. You can teach people how to do the right thing but there is no guarantee they will follow through, this is true in both engineering and business. In business school you will be taught to plan for the long term, to treat your business partners well, to treat you employees well, to treat your customers well, to be socially responsible, to be ethical, etc. In other words things leading to long term company success.
(2) An MBA program is probably not what you think. An MBA program is not about accounting and financials, that is just once topic covered. An MBA program is an overview of the complete organization and its lifecycle: Entrepreneurship, strategy, product development, marketing, accounting/finance, operations, information technology, organizational behavior (people), economics, etc.
(3) Your classmates will probably not be what you expect. Most people in an MBA program are not coming from an accounting/finance background.
(4) You get what you reward. There is a common theme that occurs in many classes, strategy, accounting, product development, information technology, operations, etc. Many failures can be traced back to having the wrong incentives. Basically people give you the behavior you incentivize, that you reward.
I have a serious question. Maybe I’ve been working for dysfunctional organizations too much, but I’ve noticed a different MBA pattern.
That “MBAs can manage anything” mindset is a killer in technical job roles, and has led to me working on some miserable projects. Of course, there are exceptions, but why does the MBA automatically qualify someone as a manager any more than a paper technical certification conveys proficiency with a product?
Even without wanting to move to a non-tech area or become management, understanding the business side of things gives insight into how/why decisions get made. It can also allow you to make calls as to which features you will implement when faced with a limited budget or other item not related to the technology. I have found it allows me to make better decisions based on pragmatic reasons and fight the fights that are really important, rather than wasting time on something that is technically not overly important but to a business person is apparently critical.
Most businesses are doing it wrong.
Instead of moving smart people from being productive to management-type functions and get payed more, they should pay the more productive people more.
As Gabe Newell from Valve puts it: Management is a skill, not a career path.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Android First is a Myth
http://stevecheney.com/why-android-first-is-a-myth/
In mobile, particularly in consumer markets, there has been an ongoing debate about when or if Android will become the first platform that sophisticated startups develop for. Often times, this argument is wrongly centered around vanity metrics for Android such as worldwide shipments or installed base of each platform.
The reality is that platform constraints at the engineering and financing levels tell a much different story. “Android-first” faces structural and financial barriers which are unlikely to be overcome. iOS will remain the primary platform that startups develop for regardless of how much more quickly Android grows share. Here are the reasons why:
1. In the US, iOS market share is still extremely strong
2. building and releasing on Android costs 2-3x more than iOS.
3. The effort required to build and release an app is severely gated by capital-raising. Today’s startup seed rounds typically range between $800K to $1.2M.
4. These structural limitations around capital raising for venture-backed companies force startups to take a non-linear path to development which is gated by fundraising
5. To build a mobile app with $1M in capital, a startup can roughly afford to hire one designer, one client developer (iOS or Android) and one back end engineer.
6. Almost zero startups are going Android-first under these constraints. Why? Because founders know they have an extremely high bar to prove traction on the primary platform, before they can raise additional financing and accelerate into two platforms.
7. So it’s well known in tech circles today that seed round sizes constrain app development to a single primary platform. And startups are choosing to go iOS first
8. Since iOS better supports startups’ ability to prove metrics requisite for raising Series A rounds from institutional investors, the earliest most innovative services are almost always available first on iOS.
9. For every seed-funded startup which successfully raises a series A, about 80-90% die trying.
While in theory Android provides a very modern platform for mobile development, the realities around Android-first are quite different. Startups simply cannot afford to bypass iOS and go Android out of the gate. One could even argue the gap is widening.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pretty horrible business talk here:
http://web.inxmail.com/avnet-emg/html_mail.jsp?params=105447+tomi.engdahl%40netcontrol.com+0+0000uni00000m0000000000mm0m052u7
“The Intel® Atom™ processor E3800 product family is an important tool in helping address the challenges and opportunities of the Internet of Things (IoT), providing the end-to-end scalability sought by companies looking to capitalize on today’s increasingly connected world.”
Take a note on the business language “filler”wording:
- address the challenges and opportunities
- providing the end-to-end scalability
- capitalize on today’s increasingly connected world
Tomi Engdahl says:
The general perception is that IT projects often go wrong in one way or another. If you did not disappoint schedule or budget, then the end result is something other than was desired. Too often we go wrong in all the three points.
“Almost all of the company’s development projects will change at some point in the system’s old either change or get a new one. At this point, it should be according to the lead and the work may be given to bit hackers, which is perhaps more interested in the latest technology as a whole. If the company still communication and project into practice are factors that are trivial, will easily go in the wrong direction “, Information Technology Association of Robert Seren says Editor in an interview.
He sees a great challenge to corporate management and IT management in the development of interaction. Quite simple things and the right kind of leadership can be a lot of positive time.
He points out that under the leadership of the business and IT leadership often have different views on how to start using the new technology within the company.
The acquired business benefits of improved productivity, job satisfaction, and so on are hard to measure.
Source: http://www.tietokone.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/ttl_n_ser_n_projektit_onnistumaan_vuorovaikutuksella
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tech Gives Rise to the Digital Marketer
http://www.cio.com/article/741601/Tech_Gives_Rise_to_the_Digital_Marketer?page=1&taxonomyId=3148
That sound you hear is the buzz around marketing using social media and mobile apps. Not only can marketers now reach a larger audience, data analytics measure the effectiveness of digital campaigns in quantifiable terms. But can marketing pros become technically literate without losing their creativity?
Their profession used to reward individuals whose intuitive decisions somehow yielded higher sales and greater brand awareness. Now marketing’s colorful, creative tradition has been exposed by the harsh light of digital data and analytics that deliver black-and-white numerical results.
“You must be able to measure it and see the needle move,”
Social networks and mobility are at the core of this digital marketing movement.
At Ad Age’s Digital Conference, the buzz was around marketing on social networks. Social media marketing has drawn a lion’s share of attention, in part because marketing efforts can be easily tracked. It’s not just buzz, either. Advertisers are placing their bets on social.
Marketing dollars are divided into three buckets: paid, owned and earned.
“Paid” is when a company pays to advertise in someone’s media channel, say, a magazine.
“Owned” is when a company owns the media channel, such as its website.
“Earned” media is when the consumer drives the action. For example, a company gets its message out through viral sharing on a social network.
“We believe the future is 25 [percent] owned, 25 paid and 50 earned,”
Measurable marketing is a sea change for marketers. For years, marketing was considered more black art than science. Creative advertising genius David Ogilvy once wrote: “Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped.”
With today’s data gathering and analysis software, companies don’t need to question anymore
For marketers, they’ll have to become digital experts.
Today’s digital marketer will need to know what works in “earned” media. Short videos (think: Vine) with a personable story to tell seem to have the best chance of going viral and gaining massive Web audience, especially if they attract a social network’s top influencers.
The digital marketer must also know how to find the right customers and how to reach them. In today’s data-driven world, companies have more information about prospective customers than ever before. And so consumers’ digital footprints and location-based searches make them ideal targets.
This is where creativity in marketing comes in; creativity is not dead, it’s just gone digital.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner Says CIOs and CMOs Must Learn to Collaborate on Digital Marketing
http://www.cio.com/article/741623/Gartner_Says_CIOs_and_CMOs_Must_Learn_to_Collaborate_on_Digital_Marketing?source=cioartmor
The research firm predicts the convergence of IT and marketing as businesses increasingly look to digital promotional strategies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nice job, technology. Now we have to work FIVE TIMES HARDER
Now that your phone is a computer, you’re never off the clock
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/23/technology_has_made_us_work_five_times_harder/
Researchers have claimed that modern technology has made workers almost five times more tired productive than they were in the ’70s.
A business report painted this as entirely good news, hailing the fact that workers are now chained to their smartphones or fondleslabs and can work around the clock.
In a paper called the “Individual Productivity Report”, analysts from the O2 Business and the Centre for Economic and Business Research claimed there had been a 480 per cent rise in “ICT-related labour productivity” between 1972 and 2012, compared to a relatively meagre growth of 84 per cent for overall labour productivity.
Tech-driven productivity will go up even further, the report continued, driven by high speed mobile internet access and tablet computers, allowing wage slaves to put nose to grindstone wherever they happen to be.
The researchers predicted that tech-related productivity would soar by 22 per cent between 2012 and 2020, or 2.5 per cent a year.
“Employers have been able to condense work-flows among fewer workers. The result is fewer secretaries taking diction, for example, and more managers dealing with their own administration in emails and exchanging documents online.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IT’s two faces
Two-tier companies. Studies show that ten per cent increase in the digitization of society increases 0.75 per cent of gross domestic product growth.
The same trend applies to businesses and productivity. IT-intensive firms’ productivity is on average better than it: the less making use of business productivity.
The thing is, however, ambiguous. It: s use are either really productive on the one hand, or even worse than other companies.
Information technology investment, therefore, can significantly improve the productivity, but at worst, weaken it. Why is this so?
This has opened up a new era. Ironically, however, to say that because we are human beings, so the better the data, however, never fully replace the Hippo method (highest paid person opinion) but in the best case, to improve it.
Automation. Many tasks based on processes that can be treated, at least in part, a machine to automate. Machines do not get tired, and do not make mistakes. In addition, the efficiency of machines is often superior.
This change tasks. Most probably not bother me that the primary production accounted for only three per cent of GDP. Primary production required by the labor market has shifted to the processing and services.
Similarly, the automation of industrial processes move towards service processes. This leaves room for new needs and through new tasks, including humans. Buyers are eternal.
Sharing of information. A large part of the people, businesses and the functioning of society is based on the sharing of information and its utilization.
Digitalization, networking and powerful search engines make it possible for us to apply for an instant almost any type of information.
Time and place. Ict release, as well as a lot of people at work and leisure time, time and place.
Teleworking, mobility, e-commerce and, say, a continuously updated documentation distributed not only to increase efficiency but also increase people’s everyday lives.
Nordic wilds can be made not only a world-class things, but also to implement a global service.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/blogit/CIO_100_blogi/itn+kahdet+kasvot/a941087
Tomi says:
On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs
http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
Ever had the feeling that your job might be made up? That the world would keep on turning if you weren’t doing that thing you do 9-5? David Graeber explored the phenomenon of bullshit jobs for our recent summer issue – everyone who’s employed should read carefully…
On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.
In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more.
In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.
Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, “professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers” tripled, growing “from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.” In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away (even if you count industrial workers globally, including the toiling masses in India and China, such workers are still not nearly so large a percentage of the world population as they used to be).
These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.”
It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen.
While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the layoffs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things; through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper-pushers ultimately seems to expand, and more and more employees find themselves, not unlike Soviet workers actually, working 40 or even 50 hour weeks on paper, but effectively working 15 hours just as Keynes predicted, since the rest of their time is spent organising or attending motivational seminars, updating their facebook profiles or downloading TV box-sets.
The answer clearly isn’t economic: it’s moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger